Keep Calm and Teach English

Browsing through templates for powerpoint and google presentations, I came across a Halloween template in Slides Carnival that was just too beautiful to ignore. So I transferred one of my older lessons about the origins of Halloween into these slides making a few changes. For example, I added a KWL chart   at the beginning of the lesson to activate students' interest and have them ask their own questions about this popular custom.  Questions such as: W hy do people celebrate Halloween?, Is it really an American tradition?, Who was Jack-O- Lantern? and many more can be answered in the text.  I also changed some of the True - False questions to make them easier to remember as students are not going to have a printed version of the text.  The crossword can be downloaded separately.  If you've used it, how did the lesson go? Let me know in the comments below!

A "This is Britain" video on Halloween for younger learners together with worksheets to use in the classroom.  photo by  Bekir Dönmez

"All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's play  As You Like It . The speech ( Act II Scene VII) compares the world to a stage and life to a play, and categorizes the seven stages of a man's life: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, old age and facing imminent death. The man in the poem goes through these stages all expressed in a sardonic and sometimes bitter tone: Infancy: He is a helpless baby and knows little. Whining schoolboy: He begins to go to school and is unwilling to leave the protected environment of his home.  The lover: In this stage he is always sentimental, expressing his love in a silly manner.  The soldier: He is uneasy and hot-headed. He is always working towards making a reputation for himself even at the cost of foolish risks. The justice: In this stage he thinks he has acquired wisdom. He has reached a stage where he has gained prosperity and social status and b...

Twenty Questions is one of those "go to" games that require no preparation and can be used as a timesaver when the lesson finishes earlier than expected, as a student reward or even when you are too tired or ill to continue, (because let's be honest, teachers can have "one of those days"....). photo by  Karinamannott A fun alternative to the game is  Akinator, the Web Genie . Akinator is an internet game and mobile app based on 20 questions that can guess which character the player is thinking of by asking them a series of questions. It is  an atificial intelligence program that can "learn" the best questions to ask you.  What is interesting about the Akinator is that the more you challenge him the bigger his database becomes.  With Akinator students can have the chance to see questions modelled for them before they actually try to ask their own - asking questions is not as easy as it sounds for language learners especially in lower lev...

LearningApps.org is a Web 2.0 application that allows you to create interactive teaching modules to support your lessons. It is very simple and straightforward in its use and requires no special digital skills. Every module created is public and can be used by any teacher interested. photo by  Karita88 Among the formats offered are games like 'Who wants to be a millionaire?", matching pairs, clozed tests, crosswords,  activities on  audio/video material, group puzzles etc.  If you feel it is too much work you can search  among the already made modules, like for example this simple matching activity I created for my 1st Grade (of Junior High) students. It can be used as a pre-reading activity for  Halloween related lessons .